Drama: Dave Style

It's always been a real struggle for me to memorize anything verbatim, and so when I watch any dramatic performance, I'm always impressed that actors can memorize so many lines-- and I learned something this week from one of my drama students that further inspired my appreciation for the mnemonic ability of the thespian; we were acting out the scene in Twelfth Night when Toby reads aloud Andrew's absurd challenge to Caesario and I remarked how it must be a nice break for the actor to get to read something, instead of having to rely on his memory, and this aforementioned drama student told me that actors have memorize the lines in a letter and the paper is blank (in fact, he said that during one performance where there was a reading of a letter, the other kids wrote filthy jokes on the prop piece of paper to screw with the actors) and this shocked me-- I figured this was a nice opportunity to not memorize something, but actors don't think this way, and so I told the class about the play I am going to write, it will require no memorization at all and consist entirely of reading things-- perhaps it will start with the protagonist getting a text on his phone and reading it to his friend, who will then read a text from his phone, and this will remind someone else of a favorite passage in a novel, which he will pick up and read, and then the mail will arrive and there will be a letter from the main character's ex-wife's lawyer, with some legal jargon that his friend will look up on Wikipedia, and read the entry aloud-- the drama kids are appalled by this premise, but I've got some of my fellow bad-memory compatriots to agree that it is a brilliant idea, the only requirement to be in the play is that you must be an excellent reader . . . so Tom Cruise, you need not apply.